Posted tagged ‘ealing’

As regular readers of this blog will know we often pre-write our posts and schedule them in to appear, as if by magic, as we commute into our respective offices. This has the advantage of them being available when people arrive at work and allows us to have evening’s doing things other than blogging.

The downside of this is that sometimes events overtake us and what we have prepared for the day is not really appropriate. Yesterday was one such day.

That being said, the fact that we didn’t have time to prepare anything riot specific on Monday night may have been a blessing in disguise. To be brutally honest I don’t think any of us would have had anything to say that would have added to a torrent of comment that was being produced by people far more qualified, and talented, than us. Between us we absorbed a lot yesterday but we all agreed that this piece by Toby Blume was worth a read and maybe slightly below the radar of some of the pieces in major newspapers etc that you may have already seen.

It was reported on the Sky News ticker at about 1pm on Tuesday afternoon that one of David Cameron’s top advisors (unnamed) had prepared a memo suggesting that the riots might be the best time to re-launch the Big Society.

It’s obviously strange timing but the unnamed advisor may have been about right. As London residents woke up to the carnage that had affected their local neighbourhoods small groups of concerned residents gathered together, got out their brooms and set off to clean up their neighbourhoods.

Nothing could be more uplifting than local people standing up to the rioters and basically saying that they will not be dominated by the violence and the chaos that follows. In many ways this was the Big Society in action. I for one thought it was an amazing statement.